The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1887-09-09
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
IsWoman's Opportunity''-Thoughts
Suggested By Its Study.
The Home the Realm Wherein She
Reigns-nTuscuIine Women and
Efeminate Men Discussed in
Their Domestic Relations.

Their Domestic Relations
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage took for the
subject of hissixth sermon at ''The Hamp-
tons'' 'Woman's Opportunity" his text
being:
So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God created he him; male and female
created he them.-Genesis i, 27.
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for a spe-
cifc work, and to move in particular
spheres-man to be regnant in his realm,
woman to be dominant in hers. The bound
ary line between Italy and Switzerland,
between England and Scotland, is not
more thoroughly marked than this dis
tinction between the empire masculine and
the empire feminine. So entirely dissim-
liar are the fields to which God called them
that you can no more compare them than
you can oxygen and hydrogen, water and
grass, trees and stars. All this talk about
the superiority of one sex to the other sex
is an everlasting waste of ink and speech.
A jeweler may have a scale so delicate
that he can weigh the dust of diamonds,
but where are the scales so delicate that you
can weigh them in affection against affec-
toin, sentiment against sentiment, thought
against thought, soul against soul, mans
world against a woman's world? You
come out with your stereOtyped remark,
the man is superior to woman in intellect;
and then open on my desk the swarthy,
iron-typed, thunder bolted writings of
Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth Brown
ing, and George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotyped remark about
woman's superiority to man in the item of
affection but I ask you where was there
more capacity to love than in John, the
disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the
Scotchman, and John Summerfeld, the
Methodist, and Henry Martin, the mis-
sionary. The hearts of those men were so
large, that after you had rolled
into them two hemispheres, there
was room still left to marshal
the hosts of Heaven and set up the throne
of the eternal Jehovah. [ deny to man
the throne intellectual. 1 deny to woman
the throne afrectional. No human phrase
ology will ever define the spheres, while
there is an intuition by which we know
when a man is in his realm, and when a
woman is in her realm, and when either of
them is out of it. No bungling legislature
ought to attempt to make definition or
to say: "This is the line and that is the
line"
Ny theory is that if a woman wants to
vote she ought to vote, and that if man
wants to embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to embroider and keep
mousse IuoF0 are masculine WOLlSh anu
effeminate men. My theory is that you
have no right to interfere with any ones
doing any thing that is righteous. Al
bany and Washington might as well de-
cree by legislation how high a brown
thrasher should fly, or how deep q trout
should swim, as to try to seek out the
height or the depth of a woman's
duty. The question of capacity
will settle finally the whole ques-
+hn -I1n1n a
woman is prepared to preach, she will
preach, and neither conference nor presby-
terry can hinder her. When a woman is
prepared to move in highest commercial
spheres she will have great influence on
the exchange, and no boards Of trade can
hinder her 1 want woman to understand
that heart and brain can overly any bar
rier that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
There are women, know, of most unde-
sirable nature, who wander up and down
the cOuntry-having no homes of their
own, or forsaking their own hOmes-talk-
ing about their rights, and we know very
well that they themselves are fit neither
to vote nor to keep house. Their mission
seems TO be to humiliate the two sexes at
the thought Of what any of us might be-
come. No one would want to live under
the laws that such women would enact, or
to have cast upon society the children
that such a woman would raise. But
shall show you this morning that the best
rights that woman can own she al
ready has in her possession; that her posi-
tion in this country at this time is not one
of cOmmiseratiOn, but one of cOngratula-
ton; that the grandeur and power of her
realm have never yet been appreciated;
that she sits to-day on throne so high
that all the thrones of earth piled on top
of each other would not make for her a
footstool. Here is the platform on which
she stands. Away down below 1t are the
balIot-box and the congressional as
semblage and the legislative hall Women
always have voted and always will vote
Our great-grandfathers thought they were
by their votes putting Washington into
the presidential chair. No. His mother,
by the principles she taught him, and by
the habits she inculcated made him Presi-
dent. 1t was Christian mothers hand
dropping the ballot when Lord Bacon
wrote, and Newton philosophical,
and Alfred the Great governed,
and Jonathan Edwards thundered of
Judgment to come. How many men there
have been in high political station who
would have been insufficient to stand the
test to which their moral principle was put
had it not been for a wife's voice that en-
couraged them to do right, and a wife's
PRAYER that sounded louder than the
cIamor of partisanship? Why, my friends, !
the right of suffrage, as we men exercise
it. seems to be a feeble thing. You, a
Christian man, come up to the ballot-box !
and you drop your vote. Right after you
comes a Iibertine, or sot--the offscouring
of the street-and he drops his vote; and
his vote counteracts yours. But if in the |
quiet Of home life a daughter by her |
Christian demeanor, a wife by her in !
dustry, mother by her faithfulness, casts |
a vote in the right direction, then nothing |
can resist it, and the influence of that vote |
win throb through the eternities.
My chief anxiety then, is not that wom- |
an have other rights accorded her, but |
that she, by the grace of God, rise up to !
the appreciation of the glorious rights she |
already possesses. This morning shall |
only have time to speak of one grand and |
aIl-absorbing right that every woman has, |
and that is to make home happy. That /
realm no one has ever disputed with her. /
Men may come home at noon or at night, /
and they tarry a comparatively little /
while; but she all day long governs it, 1
beauties it, sanctifies it. It is within her 4
power to make it the most attractive place /
on earth. It is the only calm harbOr in 4
this outside world, and the business world 1
is long scene of jostle and contention. |
The man who has a dollar struggles to /
keep it; the man who has it not struggles I
TO get it. Prices up, prices down,
losses, gains, Misrepresentation, goug- 4
ings, underselling, buyers depre-
ciating, statesmen exaggerating, tenants 4
seeking less rent, landlords demanding |
more, gold fdgety, struggles about Office,
men who are in trying to keep in, men out
trying to get in, slips, tumbles, defalca
tions, panics, catastrophes. o woman
thank God you have home, and that you
may be queen in it.
Better be there than wear Victoria's cor
r-a% pa4tar ia bera than feayr~ty fna varrrsa ~